Reading Round Up February 11-20

Bringing Down The Duke by Evie Dunmore – 5 Stars This is the story of Annabelle Archer as she is about to start at Oxford as one of the first female students. She is there under a scholarship and must help with the woman’s suffrage movement and recruiting men of influence. Her target is the Duke of Montgomery and what follows is a hilarious and sometimes steamy set of events around these two. I loved the interactions between the Duke and Annabelle but also the side the characters were great too. I can’t wait for the next book which is about two people we met in this book. I highly recommend this book even if you are not a fan of historical romance, there was so much to love in this book.

The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman – 5 Stars If you have been following me for awhile then you might know that The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman was one of my favorite books last year. Well now we can add this one as well! In this story we are following Lilian Girvan who was widowed about 4 years ago and has two young daughter age 5 and 7. She thinks that she is doing fine and has a plan to start dating again once the girls are out of college.

Lilian works as an illustrator for a textbook company and is one day informed by her boss that she will be doing illustrations for a book on vegetables. Her boss also informs her that she signed her up for a gardening class to get to know the product better. What happens from there is a story about learning to move forward after a tragedy and that maybe what she had planned wasn’t what she really wanted. Abbi has a way with words that brought me to tears from laughing and from sadness. I will say that I was not prepared for the amount of times that worms would come upon this book! In the beginning when Lilian is getting the details on this class her boss explains that she can’t do it because of an experience she has when young with worms. Lilian did not under stand this but I DO!!!! I had a traumatic experience and to this day have slight phobia when it comes to those things (in my house they are referred to as the “W” word). Aside from this minor thing this book was everything. At times I related to Lilian so much as mother and the paragraphs about her shopping at Target were perfect. I can not recommend this one enough! (TW for death of a spouse, depression and grief)